One of the most heroic air raids occurred 75 years ago during World War II on Aug. 1, 1943.
On that date, 178 B-24 Liberators from five Army Air Forces bomber groups near Benghazi, Libya, conducted a heroic but relatively ineffective low-level raid against the oil refineries around Ploesti, Romania. The second most heavily defended target area in Occupied Europe, these nine refineries produced about 90 percent of Romania’s oil, which was about 60 percent of Germany’s wartime needs.
The raid cost the attack force 54 planes and 432 Airmen (310 killed, 108 captured by the Axis, 78 interned in Turkey and four rescued by Tito’s Partisans in Yugoslavia). Five Airmen each received a Medal of Honor, the most for any single air action in history. Three of the five medals were given posthumously, and all five bomber groups received Presidential Unit Citations.
The attack temporarily eliminated about 46 percent of Ploesti’s annual production, but all the damaged refineries were back in full production within three months, making the attack fairly ineffective.
During the 1930s, the faculty and students of Air Corps Tactical School, Maxwell Field, Alabama, had developed the Industrial Web Theory. According to this theory, a modern industrialized society consisted of a series of interlocking sectors. Systematic aerial bombing of the individual nodes that made up these sectors would eventually bring about the collapse of this society.
